January 2010
35 posts
New patients--- Are you prepared for your visit? ...
I’m really looking forward to the moment in the future when the only part of this advice includes the questions and not to bring hard copies of your medical history.
jayparkinsonmd:
hjluks:
Physicians are under pressure to see patients in a timely, effective, and efficient manner. Take a little time, organize your thoughts, come prepared and your visit could be much more productive.
...
How to calculate an ROI, easily explained, better... →
Shorter-term planning
WSJ, Strategic Plans Lose Favor:
During the recession, as business forecasts based on seemingly plausible swings in sales smacked up against reality, executives discovered that strategic planning doesn’t always work.
“The universe is made of stories, not atoms.”
– Muriel Rukeyser (via designtumblelog)
“We’ve had the same basic design for tray tables for 40 to 50 years. It doesn’t...”
– Charles Puchta, director of the Center for Aging with Dignity in UC’s College of Nursing, on a hospital tray redesign being undertaken by University of Cincinnati design students. Love this stuff.
Resolve to Fail
I’ve long been a fan of the Tom Peters mantra “fail faster.” It points out that those who fail more often are apt to try more stuff and if you try more stuff you’re likely to find more success.
But I’ve struggled with its healthcare applicability. We don’t need more failure in healthcare, we need less (e.g., the IHI’s 5 Million Lives Campaign). In...
Molasses-like progress
Communication, or the lack there of, is a big problem in healthcare organizations. The multi-disciplinary nature of healthcare delivery is largely responsible for that. We need input from everyone to make decisions.
That’s also why change can seem so slow (Rather, that is why change is so slow). So instead of trying to include everyone, should we just include those who are necessary?
...
Local is working
I love the local solution that is Healthy San Francisco. San Francisco Magazine has a terrific article on the program—which is not insurance, so to say. Whatever your political feelings may be and whatever the business realties are, it’s absolutely a glowing example of a locality solving its own problems.
Saying sorry makes the recipient feel better
Apologizing is good. Glad healthcare is doing more of it:
8. Turns out, saying you’re sorry really is important—and not just to you. A study discussed at the Child Psychology Research Blog found that receiving an apology makes the recipient feel better by affecting his or her perception of the wrongdoer’s emotions. In other words, people who received an apology felt better afterward because the...
Consuming attention
Bud asked his post on what inspires him to be shared, so here it is. No healthcare, but I’ve found it to be consuming over the week + I’ve been following.
Healthcare (knowledge) worker shortage
Wired tells us that Toyota is trying to build nurse robots. The problem, as we face to a lesser extent in the U.S., is Japan’s aging population and low birth rate resulting in a shortage of nurses. The company is working on building robots to take care of the elderly inside the hospital and out.
Nursing shortage solved, let’s move onto the next one: knowledge workers. Nine Shift...
How a doctor’s office can affect patient trust →
Goals can be bad
Goal setting can be bad without proper perspective. Further proof that success = balance.
“One-third of American adults are obese, according to new U.S. government figures...”
– WSJ
Balancing more-profitable, less-profitable, and...
Marketplace did a story on ambulatory surgery centers. If you’re familiar to healthcare you have heard it all before. Moving care to the most cost-efficient locale is the right thing to do.
But what’s frustrating is what this reality highlights about the system. Hospitals, generally, aren’t cool with physician-owned surgery centers because they tend to take away the more...
"It's a little like the health care industry..."
I looooove that healthcare can be used as a metaphor to describe Wall Street goings on. Ugh:
It’s a little like the health care industry, where you get a partial form of regulation. And whenever you get a partial form of regulation, you get a sort of call shift that goes somewhere else. It goes to the place where it’s not regulated.
Creativity in healthcare
CBS Sunday Morning:
Americans seem to agree the country could use more creative minds. A CBS News Poll found that about one in four (24%) thinks our education system needs it the most, while another 26 percent points to health care, and 28 percent says alternative energy.
Screwing up is a start to progress.
A fascinating Jonah Lehrer read.
Relatable learning from teaching
Amanda Ripley has a wonderful article in the Atlantic, “What Makes a Great Teacher?” The similarities between healthcare and education are astounding. The article is full of relatable lessons to any endeavor. Read the article, below is but a sampling.
Years of experience are less important than previous performance:
Things that you might think would help a new teacher achieve...
A master's degree in listening
You can get a master’s degree in narrative medicine from Columbia. While there’s no specific job market, yet, it will put you ahead of the curve. Expensive at $50,000, still a cool year of edification.
“… 94 percent wanted the checklist.”
– Atul Gawande via my good buddy Matt
"Physical tagging!"
I’m completely taken by this concept. A prize, to be determined (by me), to the person who can figure out how we can do something similar in healthcare.
The explanation from Nina Simon:
Haarlem Oost is a branch library in the Netherlands that wanted to encourage visitors to add tags […] to the books they read. […] To do this, the library didn’t create a complicated computer system or...
Chief Culture Officer
Speaking of conversion from the Amazon Wish List to the shopping cart, this one should be on your list too: Chief Culture Officer by Grant McCracken. Bonus link: an interesting interview with Bud Caddell.
The Checklist Manifesto
Atul Gawande’s The Checklist Manifesto has been on my Amazon Wish List for a week. He is, by far, my favorite healthcare author. Steven Levitt’s comment at Freakonomics, however, has rushed this book to my Amazon shopping cart:
Not only is the book loaded with fascinating stories, but it honestly changed the way I think about the world. It is the best book I’ve read in ages.
Wow.
Innovation centers offer patient experience...
I think there’s a hybrid model to improving the patient’s experience that consists of two basic tenets 1) involving the patient (the focus of this post) and 2) ignoring the patient. Both are important in their own right.
Asking patients for their input improves the experience at an incremental level (most often), their worldview limits what’s possible. Don Norman explains why...
Can't wait to see what augmented reality does for... →